Dr. Ambrose McLoughlin:

I want to be clear about this, Chairman. A Department of State can only deal with fact. It cannot deal with supposition or hearsay. There is a letter from Mr. Seán McGrath, the national director of human resources, to Mr. Michael Scanlon, which I am quite happy to circulate to the committee. It clearly deals with adherence to consolidated health sector salary scales. We have to deal with fact. I want to be clear also because comments were made by the Deputy. I want to assure the charitable organisations, and the people who are collecting money for them across this State, that the Minister, myself and the HSE's director general are determined to give them the best guarantee possible by following through on these investigations. I want to be clear, however, that there is no evidence that anything other than a very small number of people are non-compliant. It is important for us to reiterate the fact that 99.9% of public servants are compliant with public sector pay guidelines.